Tag: Anxiety

A guest feature first posted on openDemocracy that provides a preview of the issues and problems to be discussed at the conference, Politics in Times of Anxiety, University of Manchester, June 9 – 11, 2014. Politics in Times of Anxiety springs from the 9/11 attacks, when public safety and security turned into a central concern across…

Today’s public secret is that everyone is anxious. Anxiety has spread from its previous localised locations (such as sexuality) to the whole of the social field. All forms of intensity, self-expression, emotional connection, immediacy, and enjoyment are now laced with anxiety. It has become the linchpin of subordination. One major part of the social underpinning of anxiety is the multi-faceted omnipresent web of surveillance. The NSA, CCTV, performance management reviews, the Job Centre, the privileges system in the prisons, the constant examination and classification of the youngest schoolchildren. But this obvious web is only the outer carapace. We need to think about the ways in which a neoliberal idea of success inculcates these surveillance mechanisms inside the subjectivities and life-stories of most of the population.